title: “Email Campaigns”

This guide covers the Email Campaigns module. If your gallery has not switched it on (the Owner does that in Settings → Extensions), this page will not match what you see — skip it for now.

Email Campaigns

For gallery staff. Campaigns sends an email to everyone on your list who has said yes to hearing from you: the monthly newsletter to your patrons and collectors, an invitation to a show opening, a note that the holiday hours have changed. You write the message once, check it, send a test to yourself and then send it. It lives under Campaigns in the sidebar; the page itself is headed Email Campaigns.

The one rule to hold onto: a campaign only ever goes to people who gave consent. You never pick recipients by hand. Every send works out the list again at that moment from the consent on each person’s record, so a patron whose consent box is unticked is left out, whatever else you choose.

Before you start

Email Campaigns is an extension and is switched on for a new Studio gallery. If there is no Campaigns item in your sidebar, one of two things is true:

• The extension is off. The gallery’s owner turns it on under Settings → Extensions (only the owner can switch self-serve extensions on or off).
• Your account lacks the permission. Owners and admins always have it. Anyone else needs the Email Campaigns permission ticked on their account under Settings → Organization → Users; ask an owner or admin.

The same permission governs sending. Previewing a campaign’s recipients, Send test to me and the Send to button are for Owners, Admins and anyone with Email Campaigns ticked, the same people who can build a campaign. Anyone else who opens a campaign does not see those two buttons, and the recipient preview is not loaded for them.

Three things make a campaign look like it comes from your gallery. Set them up once:

1. Your logo. Upload it under Settings → Organization → Branding with Upload logo. Without one, the logo option on a campaign is greyed out.
2. Your public contact email. Fill in Public contact email on the same Branding page. Replies to a campaign go there; without it, replies go to whoever created the campaign.
3. Consent on your patrons. In Patrons, only people with May we send them news and invitations? ticked receive a newsletter. People who sign up for the newsletter on your website arrive with it ticked already. See the Patrons guide.

Who receives it

The Campaigns page has two cards: Comms styles at the top and Campaigns below. A comms style is the kind of mailing: it decides which consent a person must have given. You need at least one before you can write a campaign.

There are two consents, and they match the two boxes on a patron’s record:

For a newsletter or a show invitation, use Marketing. Do not use Campaign to reach more people: someone who agreed to be contacted about a piece they asked after did not agree to your newsletter.

On the campaign itself, Recipient contact types narrows the list by kind of contact. For a gallery, the box that matters is Customers: these are the people in Patrons, whatever your gallery calls them. The others come from the nonprofit side of CartonCrew:

• Volunteers only finds anyone if your gallery uses the Volunteer Manager extension and has volunteer records with consent.
• Requesters belong to Request Manager, which is not part of a Studio gallery. It finds nobody.
• Donors (no records yet) finds nobody, as its label says.

Leave every box unticked and the campaign goes to every eligible type. Your member artists are not a recipient type. A campaign does not reach them because they are members; it reaches them only if they are also in Patrons with consent. Each address gets one copy, even if the same person appears twice.

Create a comms style

1. Go to Campaigns and press + New style.
2. Name: what staff will see, for example Newsletter.
3. Key: a short identifier in lowercase letters, numbers and underscores, such as newsletter. It cannot be changed later.
4. Description (optional): a one-line note for your team.
5. Required consent: Marketing for a newsletter or invitation (see the table above).
6. Leave Active — new campaigns can target this style ticked.
7. Press Create style.

The style appears in the list with Requires marketing consent under its name. Edit changes everything except the key. Unticking Active marks the style inactive. It is no longer offered in the campaign form, and a campaign cannot be saved or sent on it.

Write a campaign

1. Go to Campaigns and press + New campaign. (The button is greyed out until you have a comms style.)
2. Include organization logo is ticked for you. It puts your logo at the top of the email, linked to your public site.
3. Comms style: pick the style, for example Newsletter — marketing consent.
4. Subject: what lands in their inbox, for example You’re invited: opening night for the spring show.
5. Sender: the box tells you how the email will go out: Your newsletter is sent as your gallery’s name and sending address, and Replies go to the reply address. You can change From name. Change the sending name lets you change the part of the address before the @ (letters, digits and hyphens, up to 40). The part after the @ is fixed.
6. Recipient contact types: tick Customers for patrons, or leave everything unticked.
7. Message body: write the message. The toolbar has bold, italic, headings, lists, a quote, alignment, a link button (🔗, labeled Link, which asks for the address) and an image button (🖼, labeled Insert image). An uploaded image must be an image file of 5 MB or less, and it is added at the end of the message rather than where your cursor is.
8. Plain-text fallback is optional. Open it to type a text-only version for email programs that block formatting.
9. Press Save draft. You see Campaign created. and the campaign appears in the list as draft, with a campaign code beside it.

Do not add an unsubscribe link yourself. The form and the preview both say that one is added to every newsletter automatically.

Draft with AI

If AI is switched on for your gallery, a ✨ Draft with AI button sits above the message. Describe the email in a line (Invite patrons to the opening of our spring landscape show on Friday) and press ✨ Generate draft. Read the subject and body it suggests, then press Accept & insert to replace your current subject and message, or Regenerate to try again. Always read and correct what it wrote, especially dates and names. The button only appears when the AI features switch under Settings → Organization → AI is on.

Buttons the gallery does not use

Two buttons above the message, + Event and + Request link, come from the nonprofit side of CartonCrew. + Event inserts a Sign up to volunteer button for a published event, and + Request link inserts a Request help button for the Request Manager form, which a Studio gallery does not have. To link to a show or your website, select some text in the message and use Link instead.

Check it before you send

The right-hand side of the form has two tabs.

• Email preview shows the email as a recipient will see it: subject, from-line, reply address, your logo and the message. Clicking your logo or a link in the preview opens it in a new browser tab.
• Recipients shows how many people the campaign will go to now, under Eligible recipients, with a sample of the first few names.

The recipient count is worked out from the saved campaign. If you change the comms style or the ticks, press Save changes before you trust the number.

Then press Send test to me. A copy goes to your own sign-in address with [TEST] in front of the subject, and you see Test sent to your address. Open it on your phone as well as your computer.

Send it

1. Press Save changes if you have edited anything. Send and Send test to me both use the saved version, so while you have unsaved changes they are greyed out with You have unsaved changes. Save them first.
2. Press Send to followed by the number, for example Send to 214. The button is greyed out until the count has loaded, and stays greyed out if the count is zero.
3. Confirm on the page. It reads Send to 214 recipient(s) now? This cannot be undone. Press Send now.

You see Sent to 214 recipient(s)., the form closes and the campaign shows as sent with the date and the recipient count. The send goes out at once. There is no scheduling, so to send on a particular day, press Send on that day.

A sent campaign opens with View, read-only. You cannot edit, resend or delete it. To send something similar, open the old one with View and write a new campaign alongside it. There is no copy button. The copy link next to a campaign copies its campaign code, not the campaign.

Delete is offered only on a campaign that has not been sent, and asks on the page first. It removes the campaign for good. A sent campaign can never be deleted: its list of recipients is the record of who you emailed, and it is what keeps people who have since opted out off your next send.

See what happened to it

On Campaigns in the sidebar, a sent campaign has a Results button beside View. It shows six numbers: Sent to, Delivered, Opened, Clicked a link, Bounced and Marked as spam. Each person is counted once, however many times they opened.

Press a number to see the people behind it. A patron is shown by name and links to their page on Patrons, where Email history shows everything your gallery has sent them; anyone else is shown by email address and what they are to you (requester or volunteer). The numbers fill in over the hours after a send, as mail providers report back.

Opens are approximate. An open is counted when the person’s mail app loads a tiny image in the email. Some apps block images (a person reads it and no open is counted), and some privacy features load every message automatically (an open is counted that nobody made). Use opens as a hint about who is still reading, never as proof either way. CartonCrew never marks an address as bad, or takes someone off your list, because they did not open.

When someone asks to stop

Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link, and below it a link to your site’s Email preferences page (stop the emails, or correct the address). You do not need to act on either: when a patron clicks the unsubscribe link, stops the emails from Email preferences, or marks your email as spam, CartonCrew turns their marketing and contact consent off at your gallery by itself. Every record the person has here is updated, patrons included, and they are left out of every campaign you send after that. In Patrons, a grey badge shows whether they unsubscribed themselves or reported spam, and when.

It applies only to your gallery. The same person may be on another gallery’s list, and unsubscribing from yours does not take them off theirs; another gallery’s unsubscribe never changes your records either. A hard bounce works the same way: it marks the address as undeliverable at your gallery only.

Before each send, anyone on the comms style’s mailing list who no longer has consent is also taken off that list at the mail provider, so an earlier unsubscribe cannot be undone by a later campaign.

The newsletter sign-up on your website cannot undo it either. Anybody can type an address into that form, so it never puts back someone who unsubscribed or marked your email as spam; the form thanks them exactly as it thanks everyone else, and their record stays unsubscribed. If such a person tells you they want your news again, open them in Patrons (sidebar → Patrons → the person → Edit), tick May we send them news and invitations?, say how they told you, and save.

Two cases still need a person:

• A reply that says unsubscribe. It reaches your public contact email (or the campaign creator) like any other reply. Someone has to act on it.
• A patron who asks you in person or by phone. Open them in Patrons, untick May we send them news and invitations? and save. The next campaign leaves them out.

When it goes wrong

• No Campaigns item in the sidebar. The extension is off or your account lacks the Email Campaigns permission; see Before you start.
• The + New campaign button is greyed out: create a comms style first. The empty card says Create a comms style first.
• The logo option is greyed out. The form says Upload a logo in Settings → Branding to use this. Upload one under Settings → Organization → Branding.
• The sender box says replies will come to you. Replies will come to you. To send them to the gallery’s inbox, add a public contact email in Settings → Organization → Branding. Do that, and later campaigns pick it up.
• Recipients shows 0. Nobody with the comms style’s consent matches your ticks. Check that you ticked Customers, not Requesters, and that your patrons have the right consent box ticked.
• The campaign shows failed with No consent-eligible recipients. Nobody qualified when you pressed send. Open the campaign with Edit: it shows the reason. Fix the consent or the ticks, press Save changes, then Send again to the number.
• The campaign shows failed after an error from the email service. Open it with Edit and press Send again to the number. It is never sent twice: if the earlier attempt had in fact gone out, nothing is sent again and the campaign is marked sent. If the page says it could not check with the email service, nothing was sent; try again in a few minutes. If it says the campaign will not be sent again from here, the earlier attempt cannot be checked; if you are sure nobody received it, create a new campaign with the same content.
• A campaign has been in sending for a long time. Open it with View. After 30 minutes it says it has not finished and shows Mark as failed. Press it: if it had gone out it is marked sent, otherwise failed, and you can correct it and send it again.
• The send is refused with Comms style is inactive. Tick Active on the style, or pick an active style, save and send again.
• A red toast starting Broadcast email is not configured. Sending is not set up for your gallery yet. The campaign stays a draft. This is a support ticket, not a setting.
• The test says Demo mode — no email actually sent. Your workspace is in demo mode, which composes the email but does not deliver it. A real send in demo mode says Demo mode — no email sent. with the number it would reach, and the campaign stays a draft.
• Saving says Subject required or Pick a comms style. Fill in the field it names.
• The image will not upload. Image must be 5 MB or smaller. or Only image files are supported. Make the file smaller, or choose an image file.
• Deleting a comms style is refused. A style that any campaign uses, sent or draft, cannot be deleted, and the message says how many campaigns use it. Untick Active instead.